Question

Does anyone know, or have a link to an article or a step by step tutorial, that would tell me how to distribute a .net MONO application with a minimum install? The full package of Mono is like 75 MB but I know al lot of that is the compiler and libraries that I don’t need.

I just want the minimum runtime files.

What files would I need to distribute for a simple ‘Hello World’ WinForms app?

I tried just deleting files until I came up with something that worked but it only worked on the machine that had Mono installed on it. Here are the files I tried

I created a directory for my app. In that directory I created two more directories

• \bin
• \lib\mono\2.0

in the \mono\lib\mono\2.0 I put the mscorlib.dll file in the \bin directory I put the following

• Accessibility.dll
• MyApp.exe (this is the basic World I did in VS2005)
• iconv.dll,
• intl.dll,
• libglib-2.0-0.dll,
• libgthread-2.0-0.dll,
• Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll,
• mono.dll,
• mono.exe,
• Mono.Posix.dll,
• System.dll,
• System.Drawing.dll,
• System.Windows.Forms.dll

Then, from the \bin directory I ran ‘mono MyApp.exe‘ and it worked on my Mono installed machine but no others.

What I’d prefer is an ‘xcopy’ solution where there would be no actual installation necessary but just need the runtime files included (like when you run from a thumb drive)

Please note that this is to run on a Windows computer, not a Linux box.

---

I tried running mkbundle2 (it is a .net 2.0 app) and got this error

C:\Program Files\Mono-2.0.1\bin>mkbundle2
C:\Projects\SingleExeTest\bin\Release\SingleExeTest.exe –deps OS is:
Windows Sources: 1 Auto-dependencies: True embedding:
C:\Projects\SingleExeTest\bin\Release\SingleExeTest.exe embedding:
C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\mscorlib.dll embedding:
C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.dll
embedding:
C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.Configuration.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.Xml.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.Security.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\Mono.Security.dll
embedding:
C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.Windows.Forms.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.Drawing.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.Data.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\Mono.Data.Tds.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.Transactions.dll
embedding:
C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\System.EnterpriseServices.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\Mono.WebBrowser.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\Mono.Posix.dll
embedding: C:\PROGRA~1\MONO-2~1.1\lib\mono\2.0\Accessibility.dll
Compiling: as -o temp.o temp.s

Unhandled Exception: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception:
ApplicationName=’sh’, CommandLine=’-c "as -o temp.o temp.s "’,
CurrentDirectory=” at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start_noshell
(System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartIn fo startInfo,
System.Diagnostics.Process process) [0x00000] at
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start_common
(System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInf o startInfo,
System.Diagnostics.Process process) [0x00000] at
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start (System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
start Info) [0x00000] at MakeBundle.Execute (System.String cmdLine)
[0x00000] at MakeBundle.GenerateBundles
(System.Collections.ArrayList files) [0x00000] at MakeBundle.Main
(System.String[] args) [0x00000]

C:\Program Files\Mono-2.0.1\bin>\

Answer 1

looks like I got it working!

I had to install Mono in c:\mono instead of c:\program files\mono

I guess it didn’t like the spaces.